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Gasoline Alley, 2/28/23

One of the fascinating things about the current state of AI is that in science fiction, we imagined that robots would be able to dryly give ultra-correct answers to concrete questions but struggle with nuance, emotion, and (for some reason) contractions, while what we have today are chatbots like ChatGPT that will respond to your questions in fully idiomatic English paragraphs full of confidently delivered vague bullshitting and outright errors. Similarly, I think it’s funny that this is a strip with a talking bear that seems to be fluent in English but gets hung up on the idea that the bear might not understand some pretty basic idioms, when it should be focusing on laying the worldbuilding groundwork for the coming Human-Bear Wars, in which our ursine foes combine their massive strength with their newfound ability to communicate abstract concepts to one another to become an unstoppable fighting force.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/28/23

Remember, Snuffy only recently awakened his father from a Rip Van Winkle-seque sleep that lasted for who knows how many decades, so this punchline is literally true and very poignant. Pappy Smif is a man ripped out of his time! All his contemporaries are long dead, as is every detail of the world he thought he knew.

Dustin, 2/28/23

Hey, were you worried that Dustin’s parents don’t have much of a social life? Well, they do! It involves hanging out with other old people who also hate and resent their children.

Dennis the Menace, 2/28/23

Wait, is it supposed to be somehow menacing when Dennis reveals that his mother thoughtfully tidied up the house before company came over? What … what are we even doing here, guys.

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Pluggers, 2/27/23

Look, I’m not going to say that there are no plugger or plugger-identified referees, but I feel comfortable in saying that for the vast majority of pluggers, when they see a referee on TV, their first thought is not “ahh, there’s another regular working man, just like me” but is instead “HOLDING? YOU THINK THAT’S HOLDING? FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE”, so I don’t know how well today’s Pluggers is going to land. I do think it’s accurate that pluggers would never rise to a career level where they might come to know interesting corporate or government secrets, though. That part I buy.

Judge Parker, 2/27/23

“I mean, it’s only Monday. He’s gonna be monologuing for the rest of the week. You want him to wrap up on Thursday and then we have to sit around in awkward silence for two more strips? We gotta stretch this out.”

Family Circus, 2/27/23

“And maybe some new glasses. You see how close he’s sitting to the TV?”

Hagar the Horrible, 2/27/23

You know, Hagar the Horrible usually focuses on small, mundane little moments in the life of a band of Viking warriors, but every once in a while you get a glimpse of a hugely important historic moment — like today, when the Varangian Guard was founded.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/26/23

This whole Truck-Wanda thing has been slow-burning in Rex Morgan for months now, but somehow it’s only now occurring to me that this is in fact the strip’s second “courtly older gent finds romance with a gal who owns a diner” plot. One is fine, but two is indicative of the sort of sick fetish that I don’t care to see played out on the funny pages where children can see it.

Dennis the Menace, 2/26/23

We make fun of Dennis losing his edge, but Mrs. Wilson is actively seeking out some menacing. She needs someone who’s willing to say “These cookies suck ass, old woman; you’re losing your touch,” because she needs to know if she is, in fact, losing her touch.

Family Circus, 2/26/23

“Almost as if a large, spherical object is being repeatedly bashed against the wall! Welp, guess we should continue to not investigate this and hope for the best [winks]”